Sometimes the best response to a silly idea is to make fun of it in response. Facebook posts its response to Princeton’s paper that Facebook will have 80% users.

Debunking Princeton

January 23, 2014 at 2:57pm

Like many of you, we were intrigued by a recent article by Princeton researchers predicting the imminent demise of Facebook. Of particular interest was the innovative use of Google search data to predict engagement trends, instead of studying the actual engagement trends. Using the same robust methodology featured in the paper, we attempted to find out more about this "Princeton University" - and you won't believe what we found!

Facebook pokes fun that simply because there is a correlation graph it can explained by causation.

In keeping with the scientific principle "correlation equals causation," our research unequivocally demonstrated that Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely. Looking at page likes on Facebook, we find the following alarming trend:

To bring up data outside Facebook, Google Trends is used.

Sadly, this spells bad news for this Princeton entity, whose Google Trends search scores have been declining for the last several years:

This trend suggests that Princeton will have only half its current enrollment by 2018, and by 2021 it will have no students at all, agreeing with the previous graph of scholarly scholarliness. Based on our robust scientific analysis, future generations will only be able to imagine this now-rubble institution that once walked this earth.